“Forgiven/Forgotten”

Front page photo by Zia Anger

Most of the songs on Angel Olsen's bewitching full-length debut Half Way Home may have been acoustic, but no matter: her voice box is its own portable source of electricity. Olsen's live-wire vocals lit up muted, sparsely arranged folk numbers like "Acrobat" and "Tiniest Seed"—the latter of which offered up a line that captured the album's underlying tension: "It's known that the tiniest seed is both simple and wild."

But how wild that seed's grown: On "Forgiven/Forgotten" the explosive lead-off single from her second album Burn Your Fire for No Witness, the instruments around her finally match the intensity of her voice. Foreshadowed earlier this year by her rollicking single "Sweet Dreams", "Forgiven/Forgotten" is an inspired blast of scorched-earth psych-pop—all charred distortion and kick drum blows that sounds like somebody's trying to stomp out a fire. Olsen's voice grows in power as it rushes towards its bared-heart chorus, "I don't know anything! I don't know anything! But I love you." At that, the kick drum steps off. May as well let it burn.